Q. Is rm -rf * removes the files in alphabetically?

Simple answer is yes, the files/folders are removed in alphabetic sequence. I ran strace command to support my answer.

I have 4 files in my dir as shown below

surendra@linuxnix.com:~/scripts/temp/temp$ ls -lrt
total 0
-rw-rw-r– 1 surendra surendra 0 Oct 10 23:55 c.txt
-rw-rw-r– 1 surendra surendra 0 Oct 10 23:55 b.txt
-rw-rw-r– 1 surendra surendra 0 Oct 10 23:56 a.txt
-rw-rw-r– 1 surendra surendra 0 Oct 10 23:56 d.txt

When issued rm -rf * along with strace, I can see rm -rf * is converted to rm -rf a.txt b.txt c.txt d.txt irrespective of time stamp they have as shown below.

Strace command output for rm -rf *

surendra@linuxnix.com:~/scripts/temp/temp$ strace rm -rf *

execve(“/bin/rm”, [“rm”, “-rf”, “a.txt”, “b.txt”, “c.txt”, “d.txt”], [/* 43 vars */]) = 0

I have clipped the output of strace command.

From this we can conclude that * always changed to alphabetic sequence for many commands such as rm, cp, mv, find etc.

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Surendra Anne

Mr Surendra Anne is from Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh, India. He is a Linux/Open source supporter who believes in Hard work, A down to earth person, Likes to share knowledge with others, Loves dogs, Likes photography. He works as Devops Engineer with Taggle systems, an IOT automatic water metering company, Sydney . You can contact him at surendra (@) linuxnix dot com.